Thursday, July 14, 2011

Smartphones Changed Literally Everything

Brian Chen, a writer at Wired, has a book out called “Always On.” He went on the previously-mentioned best radio show/podcast on Earth (NPR’s Fresh Air) to talk about the book, which chronicles how smartphones changed the world. One of the subjects discussed was education:

“Instead of lecturing students and saying ‘Hey, open your textbook and go to page 96,’ the teacher is acting as a guide and saying ‘OK, so here’s the topic we’re going to discuss today. Take out your iPhone and go search on the web or search Wikipedia and let’s have a conversation about where we want to take this discussion,” says Chen.

He explains that students at Abilene are being taught the importance of discerning good data from bad data — and not just to blindly accept the information that would have been presented in a textbook.